how do the bot commands work

empires Ai for the commander woudl be VERY easy to do if you make it so he just does things and place buildings when people ask it, and decides when to comply on building a barracks etc by looking at the resources and other vars

in AI creating th I is the hardest to make, but you can easily use players to make intelligent decisions for the AI, and just trust him with the (more important, but easier to make) decisions of when to build a barracks by hardcoding popular strategies into it


it will still be a lot of work, but its not like its impossible to do to create a usable AI commander, and once you have the framework the actual intelligence should not be rocket science

 

For bots on the ground being commander controled wouldn't be too tough, one of the main problems that i forsee would be the class changing and upgrading system, terrain, LOS and target priority sort of stuff.
If i could get the mod set up stuff done then I could probably get them to do something useful

 

stupid bots to fill up servers? i dont know if anyone would want a bot that eats tickets faster then any noob and is incapable of doing any squad tactics

edit: simple bots to learn commanding etc, yes, but not any player replacements..

 

for testing purposes it might be useful to implement some really stupid bots that can follow simple "go to" commands, and im sure some sort of printf can be implemented to display damage caused.
one of the main problems with using people for weapon tests is they inevitably end up messing about

 

making an AI commander that even remotely compares to a human commander is impossible.
Hell they cant even program a mouse brain let alone something complicated like a strategy-making AI.

well... in theory it might be doable but game AI has anothher limitation and that is:
A) limited proccessing power and resources in general
B) time constraints

games like Civ 4 already stretch the strategy-making to its limits for games on the hardware we have now. And you have to realise that the AI in civ4 has like 100 times more time to make its decisions than the AI in any RTS game would have.



*EDIT*
I forgot to add that for commercial games its normal for the AI team (3-4 people) to start working the moment the ground rules are done.. They need a good 3 years (or whatever the release schedule is) to create a decent AI.
There's no way you would be getting decent AI for empires withing the next 6 years. Decent AI being a AI that MIGHT be fun to play against and even then I have a hard time believing anyone would play against the AI isntead of a team of REAL players.

 

all of this is true, but i was more thinking about a pre-recorded action script with some variables in it that check if certain buildings are still up

very doable, only if you find a weak spot you can exploit it every time

but since players come in effect, they can compensate for this

basically empires does not need a real "retail game smartness" AI for the commander, since its a game where as a commander you never ever have to interact with the players and everything is as scriptable as it can be

for example, a flowchart in pseudocode for a very basic AI commander (sloppy i know)

on start,

-do "refplacing"
-do "radarbuild"
-do "research"

do untill never
-if no research
--do "research"
-endif
-wait 10si
-do "refplacing"
-wait 10si
-do "orders"
-wait 10si
-do "radarbuild"
-wait 10si
-do "barracksbuild"
-wait 10si
-do "underattack"
-wait 10si
-if no research
--do "research"
-endif
endwhiledo

end

module "refplacing"
-
-if "refinery1 in range" and resources >100
--place refinery1 on "mapdefinedarea1"
-endif
-
-if "refinery2 in range" and resources >100
--place refinery1 on "mapdefinedarea2"
-endif
-
-if "refinery3 in range" and resources >100
--place refinery1 on "mapdefinedarea3"
-endif
-
-if "refinery4 in range" and resources >100
--place refinery1 on "mapdefinedarea4"
-endif
-
-if "refinery5 in range" and resources >100
--place refinery1 on "mapdefinedarea5"
-
endmodule

module "radarbuild"
-if "resources" >600 and radar exists is false
--build radar ontop of "mapdefinedareaX"
-endif

endmodule

module "basebuild"
-if "barracks1 in range" and resources >400
--build barracks ontop of "mapdefinedarea1"
-endif
-
-if "barracks2 in range" and resources >400
--build barracks ontop of "mapdefinedarea2"
-endif
-
-if "barracks3 in range" and resources >400
--build barracks ontop of "mapdefinedarea3"
-endif
-
-if "barracks4 in range" and resources >400
--build barracks ontop of "mapdefinedarea4"
-endif
-
-if "barracks5 in range" and resources >400
--build barracks ontop of "mapdefinedarea5"
-endif
-
-if "vehiclefactory1 in range" and resources >400
--build vehiclefactory ontop of "mapdefinedarea1"
-endif
-
-if "vehiclefactory2 in range" and resources >400
--build vehiclefactory ontop of "mapdefinedarea2"
-endif
-
-if "vehiclefactory3 in range" and resources >400
--build vehiclefactory ontop of "mapdefinedarea3"
-endif
-
endmodule

module "research"
-if "noradar"
--do "radarbuild"
endif
-if "resources" > "predetermined requirement"
--research "predetermined path"
--unlock vf
-else
--lock vf
endif

endmodule


module "under attack"
-if starting base buildings under attack OR commander under attack OR enemy closer to commander then 300 units
--unlock vf
--spam "/say killspawn to main"
--
-endif
endmodule

module "orders"
-if "refinery1 in range" is placeable
--do "refplacing"
--else alpha move to mapdefinedarea1
--do "radarbuild"
-endif
-
-if "refinery2 in range" is placeable
--do "refplacing"
--else alpha move to mapdefinedarea2
--do "radarbuild"
-endif
-
-if "refinery3 in range" is placeable
--do "refplacing"
--else alpha move to mapdefinedarea3
--do "radarbuild"
-endif
-
-if "refinery4 in range" is placeable
--do "refplacing"
--else alpha move to mapdefinedarea4
--do "radarbuild"
-endif
-
-if "refinery5 in range" is placeable
--do "refplacing"
--else alpha move to mapdefinedarea5
--do "radarbuild"
-endif
-
endmodule


"refineries in range" = a res node that is not blocked, with a player close enough to build a refinery
"mapdefinedareaX" = an info_target that the mapper places in his map where he wants bots to build stuff, they should be named something like bot_nf_barracks1 so the bot knows what and when to place it
"predetermined path" would be some prescripted orders of researches that progress into the trees each time it is called for combined with resource management, its a bad decision to script research as random, so its best to make 5 or so research orders and the bot picks one randomly at start and sticks to it
"predetermined requirement" is the amount of resources the wanted research needs

all the rest should make sense if you know your way around pseudocode

 

You could easily code slaughtered AI.

Just record the motions of a 20v20 match and replay them, "it's just like the real thing!"

 

triggers ask more computer resources to work

its better to code it into the game itself with "some" support in the form of map entities

 

how do you access the admin console or type those?

 

Hit ~ to open the console. However, you have to enable it via the options (I think its under advanced options in the multiplayer option menu, just check mark 'enable developers console').

After that
sv_cheats 1
bot_add

They don't do much besides walk around.